


under these hands

by hell_swan



Category: XCOM (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F, Gen, Richard Tygan as the reluctant confessor, and Lily Shen as the semi-oblivious nerd, gayer than previously anticipated, moments between the business of saving the world, starring John Bradford as the gay best friend, with guest appearances by the soldiers and staff of XCOM
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 19:11:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8812807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hell_swan/pseuds/hell_swan
Summary: "So, what, tomorrow we may die, bang your Chief Engineer today?" You say, sneering at yourself as you spit the words out. Bradford arches an eyebrow at you and you tip your head forward, smacking it against the bar. You say "sorry. It's been a long, well, shit. You know."

  "I do." Bradford says, taking your glass and downing the remaining whiskey in one smooth motion. You scoff and curl into yourself as he puts a gentle hand on your shoulder. "This war isn't going to end quickly, Commander, even with you at the front of the effort. Take your comfort where you can get it."_
You are the Commander of XCOM, charged with winning a war lost twenty years ago, and you haven't been this nervous about talking to a pretty girl since your high school prom.





	

It's the humming that keeps you awake.

There was a time when you could've slept through anything, back before the invasion, before the Council appointed you as head of XCOM operations across the globe. Your head would hit the pillow and you'd be out for twelve hours, come hell, high water, or fire alarms. It gave more than one girlfriend the creeps, but you couldn't help how you were wired. In more ways than one.

Pain lances through your head, starting at the still sore incision Tygan left behind when he took the Advent chip out of your brain. The agony ends between your eyes, making them water as you sit up in bed, gasping. The Avenger's engine sings, the alien power core pulsing like a heartbeat. Your personal quarters are above the engine room, after a fashion, and all you can hear is the thrumming of the core's elerium reaction. Shen Senior had tried to explain how it worked, back before, but chemistry was never your strong suit.

A fact made glaringly obvious by your encounters with the current Chief Engineer Shen. Lily. God, you can at least call her by her nickname when she isn't around to see you blush like a schoolgirl. You shake your head and smirk, not kindly, thinking of your soldiers seeing you behave like this. The Commander, reduced to stammering and fumbling because of a cute smile and a gearhead's charm. Before, there'd been running bets among Mission Control over whether or not you'd fall down a set of stairs if one of Vahlen's support staff walked by. Her name was Meredith and you can't remember her face.

You wipe at your eyes and reach for the lamp beside your bed, turning it on with a touch. Your quarters are empty, terminals quiet and dark, and you sigh in relief. Sometimes you see things. People. Aliens. Civilians who you couldn't save, even with the world's best and brightest under your command. You can still remember those missions, God help you. The way that a plasma bolt would tear through flimsy cloth and burn the flesh underneath. The scything claws of Chryssalids and the enraged bellows of Mutons. Those you can't forget.

You sigh and get out of bed, tugging on a tank top and a pair of BDU pants you liberated from a storage locker. Your battered and stained tan jacket goes on next, and you wrestle with your boots after. Ship time is two in the morning, and third shift has been on deck for a few hours. Bradford will be haunting the bar if he's not passed out in his bunk, exhausted after keeping watch for too long. Twenty years later and his habit of giving a hundred and ten percent has gotten poisonous. You weren't much better at the time, but now the aftereffects from the chip force you to keep normal hours, otherwise your nose starts to bleed and the hallucinations get worse.

You shut your eyes and give your head a few shakes. No reason to borrow trouble just yet. You can feel the engine pulsing under your boots and the Avenger's in the air. Your crew is alive and you're going to keep them that way, as best as you can. You are their Commander, and you won't fail them again. And right now, you're going to leave your quarters and track down Bradford, because if you can't sleep, you'd be willing to bet anything that he can't either.

The Avenger is running on a skeleton crew at these hours. There are whispers of engineers in Brazil, and a scientist hiding out in Siberia, but you haven't given the order either way regarding their acquisition. So the bare minimum is done to keep the ship aloft (or hidden, you can't quite tell yet) and that means you make it to the bar without too much fanfare. A few rooks posted on late watch quake in their boots, and you can admit that you enjoyed the fear and respect in their eyes. People will walk into the mouth of hell and die, for a legend. Not so much for a girl raised in cornfields.

You snort, passing a rare stretch of bulkhead free from the clutter of pipes and stacked supplies. You sound like Vahlen after three too many scotches. You never wanted to be The Commander. At most, you dreamed of a small home on the edges of a city, a place with a woman and a dog to come back to at the end of each day. Instead you've got the Avenger and Bradford. The latter of which is sitting at the bar, only looking up from his glass as you enter the room. He acknowledges you with a nod and pours whiskey into a second glass that was lying upside down on the bar top. You stop walking towards him, though, eyes falling on the memorial wall. Empty, at the moment.

"It'd be full, if we counted everyone." Bradford says, and you wrench your gaze away from the blank frames. You look at Bradford instead, at the way he's turned around on his stool and braced his arms back against the bar. He shakes his head, says "lost too many for that. We'd need every blank spot on the ship."

"I know, Central." You say, crossing the room and dropping onto the seat two over from Bradford. He reeks of booze, but after some rack time and a shower he'll be on the bridge, back straight and mind focused on the mission. You grab the drink he poured for you and swirl the whiskey in the tumbler.

"You get used to the engine." Bradford says, facing the bar top again. You didn't see him move. "Almost everyone does. I stopped noticing it after the first few months."

"Almost everyone?" You say, ignoring how Bradford seemed to know why you were up. This isn't the first time you've been kept awake and it won't be the last. He's been there for every sleepless night so far.

"There's a few oddballs in every outfit, Commander." Bradford says, knocking back his drink and pouring another generous swallow. You haven't touched yours, as usual. You've always been more of a beer woman during downtime. "Tygan, some of the engineers, Shen. Who you'd expect to keep an eye on it."

"Right." You say, closing your eyes and picturing Lily, the way you've seen her cock her head to the side, listening. At the time, you filed it away as a quirk. At the time, you were still wondering if you'd suddenly wake up underneath XCOM's original mountain hideaway. In retrospect, it makes sense, and you nod, saying "Lily's who you'd expect."

"A few weeks and you're already sweet on her." Bradford says, taking another pull from his glass. He's smirking, too, the barest traces of humor in his eyes. There's no hint of a question there, no hidden meaning that you could both ignore and forget about come morning. He's never had an issue with who you are, far from it. He used to be the one who would tease you over your grade school crushes on support staff and soldiers.

"I'm the Commander." You say, taking your first sip of whiskey. It burns, like the bottom shelf booze you used to get drunk on in high school; like this old argument. You're the superior officer, still, twenty years after the ceremony that graduated you from a too clever civilian to the leader of a clandestine military group. You don't get to entertain having feelings for the women under your command, not when you send half of them on missions where death is waiting in shadows and long alleys.

"You are." Bradford says, and you hear pride in his voice that makes you want to die. You've shepherded one patrol through Advent controlled countryside since they woke you up, and it was messy. "But this isn't the same outfit anymore."

"Still looks like XCOM to me." You say, pointing at one of the many insignias painted on the walls. Bradford chuckles, deep in his throat, and it sounds like rocks rattling against each other. You miss the gentleness he used to carry like the knife now strapped to his shoulder.

"In spirit, Commander. Past that, we're the ragged edge. Can't run a rebellion the same way we ran spec ops." Bradford says, sliding his glass down the bar. He takes a swig from the bottle and laughs to himself, and you're reminded of leaves blowing over a storm drain. "There's a rumor going around that you and I are long lost lovers."

"What." You say, face twisted up by confusion. It hurts, pulling on sore muscles you didn't know you even had, but you can't seem to collect yourself. You did the "kiss a boy to make sure" dance when you were fourteen, and then dated his sister for six months. "I'm. But you're. What?"

"I know, Commander." Bradford says, and he's smiling, genuine underneath the stink of liquor and regret. "Most of the crew is fresh. Picked them up in the last ten or fifteen years. Not many old hands here from Mission Control, and what few there are keep quiet."

"Assholes." You say, even though you know they're just being respectful. You tried to maintain distance between yourself and the rank and file, for morale purposes if nothing else. They needed you to be a rock. Even your senior staff were shut out half the time, Bradford excluded because you two bonded over growing up gay in the American Midwest. You blow a halfhearted raspberry and say "I'm ten years older than her."

"Shen's an adult, Commander. Has been ever since her father died. Probably well before that, too." Bradford says, and you do a piss poor job of covering a painful gasp. You still haven't processed the losses. Mission Control, Engineering, Research & Development - you knew those people. Shen and Vahlen, their assistants and fellow scientists. But all you have are names, the faces they belong to lost in the fog of your memory. Tygan says that might not change.

"I'm broken, John." You say, feeling something in your chest collapse as the confession echoes between you and Bradford. You've spent long hours thinking it, not breathing a word to Tygan or the soldiers that escorted you around the Avenger during the first week. The pressure was too much, and being needled about Lily upset your carefully balanced denial. You close your eyes and angrily swipe at the tears racing down your cheeks.

"Join the club, Commander." Bradford says, taking a long pull from the bottle before screwing the cap back on. He sighs, heavy and resigned, like he always does before he talks about feelings. You're glad that hasn't changed. "I don't think there's a single person on this ship who's not busted up on the inside. But they keep fighting. _We_ keep fighting. There's no other choice."

You scoff, remembering a different base, one hidden by mountains and snow. The word's are rougher, clipped even after half a bottle of whiskey, but it's the same speech Bradford gave you before. You'd had your command for a week, and you cracked spectacularly in the middle of the night. He found you in the mess, hunting for something suitable to get drunk off of. You would've accepted cooking sherry, and told him as much.

Back then, Bradford wordlessly offered you a hip flask. Right now, he's just giving you a measured stare as you glare at the bar top and your barely touched drink.

"So, what, tomorrow we may die, bang your Chief Engineer today?" You say, sneering at yourself as you spit the words out. Bradford arches an eyebrow at you and you tip your head forward, smacking it against the bar. You say "sorry. It's been a long, well, shit. You know."

"I do." Bradford says, taking your glass and downing the remaining whiskey in one smooth motion. You scoff and curl into yourself as he puts a gentle hand on your shoulder. "This war isn't going to end quickly, Commander, even with you at the front of the effort. Take your comfort where you can get it."

You frown and think about Meredith. Still just a name, but with a flash of blonde hair, the suggestion of a lab coat disappearing down a base hallway. You can't call up her voice or how she looked when she was close to a breakthrough or the way her shoulders might have sagged when Vahlen was riding the science team hard. Where did she spend her free time between shifts? How did she take her coffee? 

You drag a hand over your face and groan. Barely a mouthful of whiskey and you're already tripping down a useless, maudlin path. Bradford was smart to steal the rest out from under you. You reach up and squeeze his hand, saying "is James, did he. Do you know?"

"Latest reports have him gunrunning for a resistance cell somewhere in Kansas." Bradford says, and this time you don't begrudge him the pride underneath every word. Back before, it took you about six months to learn about James, another Midwestern queer trying to make good in a frightening world. Bradford was looking forward to seeing him, after the war.

"Good." You say, letting out a breath you didn't know you were holding. "Good."

"C'mon, Commander." Bradford says, getting up and taking a few slow steps towards the doorway. You follow, your legs like jelly underneath you. He catches you just as you're about to face plant into the floor, slinging one of your arms around his shoulders. "Still a lightweight."

"Shut up." You say, but you're smiling, a tiny flickering thing in the middle of a dark forest. It grows brighter as Bradford chuckles, the sound filling up his chest like a bursting pipe. You lean on him and say "put you in stasis for twenty years and make you drink moonshine, see how you like it."

"Shen can't hold her booze either." Bradford says, ignoring your petulant frown and shuffling you both out into the hall. Your cheeks are scarlet and he ignores that too, says "rumor has it that she fell asleep under the table during poker night a few months before we found you."

You drift in and out as Bradford helps you to your quarters, teasing you as you grumble your way into your bed. You fall asleep quickly, thoughts of Bradford and Lily and forgotten faces melting away before the Avenger's constant song.


End file.
